Lynching Jokes Don't Fly In Mississippi And Mike Leach Doesn't Deserve The Benefit Of The Doubt

Mike Leach isn’t gonna make it.

The offensive guru, and often eccentric coach, has been on the job for less than three months, and is already trying to get fired.

After being hired as Mississippi State’s head football coach in January, Leach is wasting no time ruffling feathers as he’s had to apologize for posting a meme to Twitter depicting an old white woman knitting a noose. The caption read: “After 2 weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf.”

The players on his roster, who are mostly black, are pissed and faculty members are upset.

“Lynching ‘jokes’ are incredibly offensive anywhere. Especially in Mississippi,” wrote Margaret A. Hagerman, an assistant professor of sociology at the school.

“I sincerely regret if my choice of images in my tweets were found offensive. I had no intention of offending anyone,” wrote Leach in an apology tweet.

Mike, stop it.

This is who Leach has always been, which is the problem, because Mississippi State knew who they were handing the keys to their football program to. Which is why it won’t be too surprising if his stay in Starkville is a short one.

In February, Leach jumped on Twitter to pop off on Mitt Romney for being the only Republican that voted for the removal of Trump during the impeachment trial.

“As an American, does ANYONE, REALLY want Mitt Romney on their side?!” he wrote.

“Those that believe in the competence of Mitt Romney, what do you trust him to do?”

In 2018, when Leach was at Washington State, he tweeted a fake video about President Obama. And when people tried to educate him he challenged them and told them to “ prove it.”

And in 2009, Leach was fired at Texas Tech due to the way he mishandled a player with a concussion.

Are you starting to see a pattern yet?

Because Leach is the common denominator.

People will put up with a lot of things when you’re winning, but the SEC is a different place. The stunts he pulled in Lubbock and Pullman won’t fly in Mississippi, especially with a majority black roster full of players who will actually play in the NFL one day.

Being a Trump supporter in a place like Mississippi isn’t the issue, irking the campus before spring practices start is.

Mike Leach is about to learn a valuable lesson, that not pissing off the black five-star recruits in Mississippi is rule No. 1.